


Out of the Woods

by MyMissus (oof1dficreally)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 16:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4713155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oof1dficreally/pseuds/MyMissus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam Payne is an over-achieving, over-enthusiastic, over-eager construction worker for a luxury firm building condos in a remote lakeside town. Zayn Malik is just over. Where once there was Promising Young Painter or Punk Wunderkind of Modern Art there is only Whatever Happened to Zayn Malik and Epic Meltdown left in his sleepy lakeside cabin in this same remote town. Liam has just been left entirely alone to finish a huge project by himself, his entire shaky position in the firm relying on its successful completion. Zayn has been alone for years, and frankly, he's fucking liked it that way. Until Liam shows up bleeding at his front door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. CHAPTER 1

Liam built his first house when he was 13 years old.

Well, it was a treehouse. It was about 5 feet wide, 7 feet long. The boards were all pre-cut when he received it. His dad had helped a lot, but, you know, building a house was really more the idea of a thing than the thing itself, wasn’t it? What he should say is, Liam experienced his first sense of tremendous accomplishment at the sight of a completed house - or you know, treehouse - when he was 13 years old, and he had been sure he wanted a career in it ever since.

Well, there were about 6 months in high school where he wanted to be a fire fighter. But this is getting really off of the point.

The point is, Liam was a single-minded little kid, a single-minded teenager, and an even more single-minded young adult. He built a house and liked it. He liked a thing and he went for it. There were no glances down side streets for Liam, no moments of self doubt. And that’s about how he ended up working for one of the most prestigious luxury construction firms in the world just two years out of university. He’d liked a thing and gone after it. The only problem was, as it turned out, catching this thing was a lot less satisfying than building that very first treehouse. Liam was eating his lunch alone.

“So, anyway, I told her if she wanted my number she was gonna have to guess it, right?” General laughter all around. Several of the other builders were eating together. “And she says that’s impossible, there are thousands of combinations of numbers I could guess from and I said well darling you must not want it that bad then, eh?”

More laughter. Liam raised an eyebrow. The fact that he didn’t find that very funny was one of several reasons he found himself eating ten feet away from his coworkers on his own. Others included an inquisitive disposition, a not-so-cultured upbringing, and an overenthusiastic zest for the job and for life.

Once again, Liam tried to suppress his oddities. He tried to chuckle a little bit at Landry’s very confusing and somehow vaguely sexist joke, but all he got were a few raised eyebrows and sideways glances from the other boys before Landry launched into another of his bar-side exploits.

This, of course, was another divider between him and the others. Liam had no bar-side exploits. And if he did, they’d look a bit different than Landry’s. There’d be a lot of stuttering and offering drinks and one too many questions about what he or she did for a job. He couldn’t help it - he genuinely wanted to know! He just didn’t know how else to approach a thing he wanted but to earnestly give it every last thing he’s got.

A few of the boys stood up and made their way back to the job site. The job site, as it was, was quite lovely.

This month Reinbech Creative Concepts had taken him to a remote lake in an even more remote mountain town Liam had never been to before. The traveling was by far his favorite part of the job. This had once been a sleepy town of locals, dive bars, homemade fire pits, and beat up boats, but some richer folks had discovered its local charm and decided to build some fancy lakeside houses much like the one Liam was working on now. This drove up the property costs and drove out the locals and turned it into something else quite different. Of course there were still some townies - running restaurants and corner stores and doing the distasteful things the visiting rich couldn’t bother to do - and the overall effect became that of an expensive piece of jewelry held in a ratty old tin box. Liam could still see the charm in the place, despite his role in destroying it. He made a silent promise to himself to go exploring before the job was through.

“Payne, get over here!”

Liam threw the rest of his sandwich back in the bag and jogged over to his boss, beckoning him from atop a newly stained front deck.

“What can I do for you, boss?” he said.

“How many years you been on with us now, eh Payne?”

Two years, seven months, thirteen days. “Not sure - must be over two years now.”

“Sounds about right. Ever thought about running your own site?”

This was the unspoken sixth reason Liam and the others didn’t get along. He did well, despite his social abnormalities. He was the proverbial kid with his hand raised. If he knew how to stop doing that, he would. Well, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe they should just raise their own hands higher.

“Well, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to have the forethought and the clarity that you - “

“Don’t kiss my ass, Payne. Just answer the question.”

He took a deep breath. “I have, sir. I’ve thought of that quite a lot.”

“Well, as you know we’ve been working on this here Haley House on and off for over a year now. Faulty foundations and septic issues - well, we’ve run the full course of setbacks by now. I think it’s time for someone to drive us home.” His boss paused to look dramatically out over the lake. See, now, that was something Liam would laugh at more than bar exploits. But he was feeling highly serious right now. “You up for that task, Payne?”

“I am, sir. I am confident that I can do it.” The answer spilled from him before he even thought of it. He was, to be sure, allergic to saying no. But he really did feel ready for it. He felt ready for something, anyway. Something bigger than he’d had these last two and a half years.

Of course, the rumor had been amongst the boys for a year now that the Haley House was cursed. Problems came up that didn’t even seem possible - infestations from a species of ants not native to the area, a neighbor with a delusion that their property shared an oil well with his own. Liam tried to see this as a challenge and not a monumental setup for failure. He tried to imagine his boss took pity on the way the others ignored him. Even more, he tried to hope his boss really saw something in him, the something Liam felt the day he and his dad finished the treehouse.

For the rest of the afternoon he and his boss walked the property together, and Liam took inventory of all the things that would need to happen for the Haley House to finally be handed over to its rightful owners. That night he returned home - “home” being a loose term for the roadside motel on the only main drag in this forgotten town - and reviewed pages and pages of hand-scribbled notes. The darker it got, the more he leaned into the room’s dim, yellowing lamp light until he was doubled over the page on basement plumbing, sketching pipe schematics in the margins.

The phone rang.

Liam jumped.

And hit his head on the lamp shade, sending the lamp to the floor.

“Hello? Hello. Sorry. Hello.” He fumbled the receiver in his hand.

“Liam?”

“Yes, hello.”

“Are you being murdered?”

It was his sister. “Ha, no. No. Well, a bit. I’ve done it to myself really. Just bumped me head on...well, a thing. How are you? What are you doing? What are you up to?”

“Putting your accident prone arse in a construction program was a real risk, Liam.”

“Answer my questions, please.”

“I’m well. I’m cleaning up after dinner. I’m cleaning up after dinner. What about you? How’s the house? How’re the boys doing?”

“Uh, me? I’m looking over some notes I made today, that’s all. House is good. Well good in that it’s a mess. Well, not a mess just sort of a mess in some places and fine in others like a swiss cheese sort of scenario where instead of holes it’s just, like, piles of crap. Um, boys are doing well. A bit antsy to finish, but I think we’re on the downswing which is good, so. Morale should improve.”

“You know what I meant by that, Liam.”

“Well, yeah,” Liam said, “I know. But. I don’t know what you want to me say to that. So I said another thing instead. A much easier thing.”

“Well,” she said, plates clanging in the background, “they’re all a bit thick though aren’t they?”

“They’re perfectly nice guys,” Liam said, but his voice had gotten so quiet he wasn’t even sure she’d heard.

“What about the other sorts of boys? Any of them?”

“Well,” Liam said, hauling himself back onto the bed to recover from his lamp mishap, “so far I’ve only seen three other people in this whole town. The fifteen year old gas station attendant, the guy at the corner store, and the old lady who pours my morning coffee. Guy at the corner store actually is kind of cute. But he has, I want to say, and I have lost count, but I’m going with five children? He’s quite young, too. But I’ve yet to meet his wife. Seems nice though. Heard him on the phone with her a few times.”

“So what are you doing then, kid? Just hanging around your sad motel room? Looking at plumbing and shit?”

“I - “ Liam eyed his pipe schematics. “Are you here?”

“Liam.”

“I’m at work, Ruth. I work at work. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Yeah sure it’s fine,” she said, the sound of running water underscoring her blatant sarcasm, “if you want to die alone and unhappy, it’s absolutely on par.”

Liam made a project out of stacking the excessive number of lumpy motel pillows neatly to his right. They made a happy little mound next to him that he almost immediately tumbled over into. On the other end of the line, the running water stopped.

“Too sarcastic?”

“A bit,” he said, his voice muffled from the pillows.

“I just want you to get what you deserve, Liam. And you deserve some people being nice to you. That’s all I meant.”

“Hey,” he said, suddenly rising from his sad plushy mountain. “The boss said he’s putting me in charge though, I didn’t tell you that. Wants me to oversee finishing the house. He probably wants to go on to the next project, which I totally understand. A year is way too long for someone like him to be bothering with this old cursed thing anyway. And yeah, we walked through the whole place today - that’s what my notes are - and he said starting Monday it’s all mine. Mine to finish. My very first house. And. That’s something. Isn’t it, Ruth? That’s pretty darn cool. Isn’t it?”

She laughed lightly on the other end of the line. “Yeah,” she said. “Pretty darn cool, Liam.”

“I thought so, too. So. You know. There’s at least that.”

“That’s a whole lot,” she said.

“It is, isn’t it? I gotta say, Ruth. Lately, it’s been feeling like there’d be something soon that was a whole lot. And maybe,” he pushed through the notes stacked on his night table, “maybe this is it.”

 

*      *      *

 

At 10:30 in the morning, unable to lift his head out of the tall, weed-filled grass, Zayn decided Nyquil was probably a legitimate drug.

An unhappy but inevitable realization if ever there were one. He tried again to sit, but his head was as heavy or heavier than the rest of his body and he want toppling back to the ground, dirt hitting him hard in the temple, morning sun blazing unkindly in his eyes. He’d tried very carefully to stay on the proper dosage, but there was nothing for it. His system was too sensitive even for this. He had lost quite a bit of weight. The now empty bottle laid inches from his fingertips. Zayn watched the green dregs of it seep across the plastic like a spilled can of paint. He reached his limp arm the last inch and grabbed it, holding the green of the medicine to the green of the grass and watching the two of them mix in his blurred vision. He pulled himself up to his feet.

By the time he hit the main road on foot it was nearly lunch and he was a trillion percent more sober. Hot. Sweating down his leg under his jeans and into his weather-inappropriate combat boots. Sharon from the diner called a hello and he lifted his hand in a wave, the same hand that could hardly grab a bottle an hour ago. He was mad and trying not to let Sharon know. He was mad he had assumed he could handle even a normal dosage of a vaguely narcotic substance. Mad that it had turned out he couldn’t. Mad he was uncomfortable, because he’d tried so hard over the past year and a half to put himself on such a routine as he could always be comfortable, and that routine involved waking at 8 in a bed not 10 in a back yard. He was mad that he had failed at something again and mad that he cared so much about not failing at things and mad, above all, that he was mad and couldn’t just wave at a nice old lady like a god damn motherfucking normal human being.

Wesley’s Corner Store was too full at this hour. If he had stuck to his fucking routine - a literally year old god damn routine that he’d just fucked in a night - he’d have been here over an hour ago, when Wesley’s first opened, and probably alone. Even for noon, though, he figured this was still uncharacteristically busy, and he glowered at the crowd back by the refrigerators when he walked in.

Harry was at the front counter. At least Harry could stick to a fucking routine. Harry was the owner of this sad establishment, and no one in Harry’s life, that Zayn had ever heard of anyway, was named Wesley.

“I can’t have this anymore,” Zayn said by way of a greeting, and slapped the empty bottle of Nyquil onto the counter in front of him.

“Cool,” Harry said, because Harry said “cool” to most things, and he took a list on a clipboard out from under the register. He wrote “Nyquil” in practiced neat script under “Dramamine” and “Red Bull” and a host of other things above that, then replaced the clipboard on its original hook. He threw the bottle away.

“Who the fuck are they?” Zayn said, taking his usual seat on one of the handful of stools and tearing open a pre-packaged pastry from a display on the counter. He was just going to pretend it was the time it was supposed to be when he came to Wesley’s. Harry looked like he was going to pretend that, too.

“Uh, construction workers,” Harry said, peering to the back of his store like Zayn having mentioned them was the first time he’d noticed the crowd at all. “They’re working on one of the houses by the water. I assume.”

“They’re fucking terrible.”

Harry shrugged, not like he disagreed but was too polite to say, rather like he agreed but was totally okay with people being awful as a concept. “That one seems okay.”

He pointed, unconcerned with being noticed, to a straggling member of the group, standing in front of the modest selection of cereal and looking still overwhelmed with the options. Zayn shrugged. Not like he disagreed but was too polite to say; he’d lost touch with politeness a long time ago. Rather like he agreed and just didn’t give a motherfuck about distinguishing good members of the group from the other ones. He turned back around and refocused on his coffee.

“Where are the kids?”

“In the city,” said Harry, lifting Zayn’s coffee while it was still in Zayn’s hands in order to wipe the counter underneath it. “They’re all coming back up in a few weeks.”

“That tough?” Harry was the only person Zayn asked questions of because Harry was so subconsciously insistent on being interesting to him. If he was interested in doing more with Harry than asking him questions, he’d probably be set for life. But Harry was weird and otherwise married, so instead Zayn just came here every morning and learned a little bit more and a little bit more about Harry until Harry became basically his best friend in the world. It was a very good part of his year-long routine. He was happy the Nyquil didn’t make him miss it.

“It is,” Harry said, not like he was sad but too polite to show it, rather like he was totally okay with being sad as a concept. “But seeing them all again is great. And we’ll be done with the two town living in another six months.”

“That’ll be good.”

“It will be.”

Harry looked like he wanted to say something else, but the crowd was counter-bound and he went to field their purchases. Zayn dove deeper into Sharon’s coffee. Out of the corner of his eye he saw bro after bro buying six packs and candy until finally the straggler pulled up the rear, brandishing no vices but sugary cereal and a Muscle Milk. He said something Zayn could have heard but didn’t bother paying attention to. Harry laughed. The straggler said something else. Zayn waited patiently for Harry to come back to him.

But just as the last of them left, the phone on the back wall rang - cell reception was but a fantasy until you got another five miles closer to the highway - and Harry had to grab it.

“Hello? Oh hey, Monkey…”

There was no way of telling if that was his partner or his kid, but either way, he’d be hung up for a few minutes more. Zayn got too anxious for his stool and then for his coffee and then for the entire store. He nodded at Harry in lieu of a goodbye, and Harry, as his now best friend in the world, nodded back without looking affronted or surprised. Zayn stopped into the diner on the way back home to get a sandwich. He walked quickly, and was back home at almost the same time he would have been had he never lost touch with his schedule. The faster walking and the lingering September heat helped him sweat out every last drop of his transgression. He was wide awake, alert, and comfortable once more.

In between bites of sandwich and slurps of homemade iced tea, Zayn propped a canvas up on his living room window, pulled up an end table, and smeared swatches of every green he could conjure from the tackle box that held his paints onto a slab of wood already streaked with dried bits of other colors. He squinted out at his overgrown front lawn, a familiar site of seclusion that filled him with even more of that comfort that was, in and of itself, like a drug, then poised his brush to select a green that could bring that feeling to life in front of him.

But as he reached his brush he hesitated, heaved a sigh, cast a wistful look in the vague direction of Harry’s shop where he’d left an important part of this fucking process. He stood there for a moment, rendered motionless by the frustration of his own stupid decision, until an idea sprang to him and he jogged to the backyard.

Just as he’d left it this morning. His indentation was nearly still in the grass. He retraced his probable steps between the back door off the kitchen to the spot where he remembered waking up, dark eyes scanning every inch of overgrown mess. Coke can, Coke can, piece of wood, broken paint brush. A familiar glint popped out to him just before he stepped on it. He enclosed his prize in one tattooed hand and dove back inside.

Just next to the canvas on the window sill, Zayn propped up the cup from the bottle of Nyquil, green sludge still stuck to the bottom of it. Rested gently at this angle, it neatly covered a patch of perfect green grass in Zayn’s line of sight. He picked his brush up now and started to mix colors. By the time he was nearing finished, the grass was awash in twilight, the cup was fallen on the floor, and the room was so dark the greens were almost indistinguishable from each other. Zayn’s concentration, however, was unwavering. And that, after all, was the point. Tomorrow he’d be up at 8AM promptly, calm, clear-headed, comfortable, and in his own god damn bed.


	2. CHAPTER 2

Three days after his boss assigned him the task of leading the Haley House to completion, Liam showed up to find half his coworkers missing.

There was a moment - to his credit, a brief one - where he wondered if it wasn’t the work of the infamous curse. Had they gotten lost in a labyrinth of unending, unfamiliar roads? Had the lake swallowed them whole? But shortly after his last gulp of protein drink, he overheard a plumber named Chad say that the boss had, in fact, taken half the team and left town late last night. Headed somewhere west as it sounded. Liam raised an eyebrow at the lack of communication, but he was confident in his plan to move forward. So, he pulled together a team to clear out some dead trees that blocked the view of the lake from the ostentatious front porch, and he rounded out his list of other impending tasks as they worked.

Five days after Liam’s boss assigned him the task of leading the Haley House to completion, he showed up to find exactly seven other people on the job. The equipment was all still there, leaving the impression of a fully functioning amusement park on a rainy day. Those that were left seemed bitter to be there. Liam thought if anyone had the right to be bitter it was him, left with the task of finishing an entire house so understaffed. But Liam didn’t have a bitter bone in his body, so he set the seven of them to finishing the siding on the back of the house and he checked his phone to ensure he hadn’t gotten any messages from his boss while he was still back in an area with reception.

The following day the entire team was gone.

This left nothing for Liam to do but drive back into town and call his boss. There was no answer the first time or the second or the ninth. Liam tried to wait a respectful half an hour before he rounded it out to an even ten calls when his phone buzzed to life on his bedside dresser and Liam practically tripped getting it into his hands.

“Sir?”

The voice on the other end was garbled and incomplete. Liam shot a frustrated glance to the phone screen and saw one sad bar flickering with life. He shoved the hotel key into his pocket and ran for the door.

“Sir? Just give me one quick second.”

Out in the parking lot the first bar was solid but the reception on the other end of the line was no better. His boss was continuing to talk, had been talking this whole time, having ignored Liam’s plea for him to allow him time to find a signal. Liam darted up the road in the less rural direction, glancing between the phone signal and the road for oncoming traffic.

“I can’t hear you, just give me one more minute to find - “ But Liam’s boss was still talking and Liam was still not hearing him and a pickup truck made absolutely no effort to swerve in its lane a little bit to allow him a wider swath of the breakdown lane.

Finally, at the top of a great incline on Route 19, Liam’s phone broke from one bar to two, and he jammed the receiving end back to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Yeah. Hello, Payne. Is that your way of saying you understand?”

“I’m so sorry, sir. Can you just repeat that last part again? Reception is a bit spotty as you probably remember.”

“When did I cut out?”

“Um,” Liam, hand on hip, eyed his path back down the hill, “somewhere around hello sir can you please hold.”

Liam’s boss had no sense of humor.

“You’re on your own, Payne.”

“How… how do you mean?” He forgot to say “sir.”

“I mean I need the team here with me on this new one. We went through everything. You’ll be fine.” He left no room for opinion or interpretation on that. “You’ll check in with me every few days. Shellback will be there when you're done to pick up the equipment. You’ll send the invoices to Ann.”

Everything was such a finite sentence. Liam couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Say ‘hello’ if you understand, Payne.”

“Hello,” Liam squeaked.

“You’re not backing down from this task, are you Payne?”

“...hello.”

“That’s what I expected. Darren, don’t - you’re gonna get that whole thing backwards - “

There was a shuffling sound on the other end, and Liam checked his phone screen once more to confirm this wasn’t his fault. The two bars blinked back at him. He pressed the phone back to his ear.

“Hello?”

But there was no one on the line. No one else at all.

 

*      *      *

 

It had been a while, or so it seemed, since Zayn last held someone’s hand.

He tried to remember it. It’d been his studio assistant, he thought. Or maybe that actor on that one Showtime show who always kept talking to him about how no one ever saw real colors. Now, here, in this nowhere place dropped out of time, it was a three year old child. A girl, massive blue eyes to match her father’s, wild curly hair to match her other one’s. Zayn had to keep reminding himself she wasn’t made from either of them. Marianna - that was her name - held his hand and kept saying the word “green” over and over like she were finding new meaning to it every time. Harry was putting Zayn’s picture up on her bedroom wall.

“We can paint your room to match it if you want, Mari,” he was saying. Harry always offered very adult decisions up to his children.

“No, because this is pretty like this,” she replied, because they were always offering very adult responses to Harry in return.

As the other two kids got chased with wild screams down the adjacent hallway, Zayn noted that Harry and his partner had two very different ways of communicating with their children and their children were a perfectly blended representation of that. So was their home, a sizeable farmhouse close to the thruway, built with such winding hallways and hidden stairs that it seemed like an accident or a mystery or a secret. Over the past year, Zayn had been here maybe ten times - many of them for holidays that Harry had insisted on - and he still didn’t really understand where everything could be found. Still, kitchens, bathrooms, places to rest appeared around corners like they were there just because you’d asked for them. Furniture was collected from all different parts of two different lives coming together here to make another one. It was blended from two people who hadn’t intended to find each other, just like the kids were.

Zayn felt a set of eyes on him from the doorway. In peered Wash, full name Washington from his biological mother, dark skin, even darker eyes. He was the same age as Marianna and inseparable from her. Over the course of their stumbled upon friendship, Harry had recounted for Zayn the nearly impossible task of adopting the two of these unrelated children together so as not to break up the bond they’d formed in foster care. He described it as “the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever done” with fondness in his voice that didn’t support the claim. He talked about Louis - that was his partner’s name - screaming at lawyers and public officials, talked about it with such pride it made Zayn ache in places he thought he’d long forgotten.

Wash was a very delicate creature, which Zayn respected. He held up his hand that was holding Marianna’s so as to say I’m okay, she likes me. Wash came in, walking a wide circle around Zayn, and settled on Marianna’s other side.

“Your picture?” he said. He wasn’t as conversational as Marianna or Harry’s other kid, Jacob, who was 5 and nearly identical to Harry’s partner, who was actually currently carrying Jacob back down the hall slung atop his shoulder.

“It’s my present because I asked for it,” Marianna stated proudly.

“I painted it,” Zayn offered. Wash slunk behind his sister.

Harry stepped back, satisfied with his minimal handy work. I mean, the picture was at least hung straight.

Marianna clapped.

Harry caught Zayn’s eye. He nodded to the door.

“Thanks for bringing it over,” Harry said. They’d headed left out of Marianna’s room and several unidentifiable turns and descensions later they were in a kitchen at the back of the house. In the backyard, Louis had a kicked a ball sailing out into the endless green that surrounded their haphazard home. Jacob went flying out into the field to retrieve it.

“He’s tiring him out,” Harry said. “Maybe himself as well.”

Louis crouched, sat, laid in the grass waiting for Jacob to bring the ball back to him. He’d gotten in a few hours ago after a five hour drive up from the city where he worked with three exhausted, crying children, who hadn’t wanted to be in the city in the first place. He’d left that morning at 4AM, and he’d leave again tomorrow night to go back, this time leaving his kids behind. Zayn started to ache again.

“Is he okay?” Zayn asked, because Harry was interesting to Zayn and so, by the transitive property, was his partner.

“He’s very frustrated,” Harry said in that same tone of voice that indicated that unhappy things were sometimes okay. “And he tries very hard not to bring that up here. But sometimes I think that’s a very selfish thing for to me ask him to do.”

“He should just fuck his contract,” Zayn said. “You guys must have enough money by now.”

Harry nodded at the glasses of water he was pouring. “Money doesn’t go as far as one thinks it will,” he said, evenly, too evenly. “And contracts aren’t very easily fucked.”

Zayn just shrugged. Harry was a very kind person - perhaps the most disarmingly kind person Zayn had ever met in his life - but he could remind Zayn in not so subtle ways sometimes that he’d lived a life other people like Harry and Louis didn’t have the luxury of living.

“What’s he gonna do up here?” Zayn asked by way of an apology.

“Teach,” Harry said without the expanded answer that indicated he’d accepted it.

“Teach what?” Zayn tried again.

“Probably special education.”

Well, he didn’t have that many tries left in him. He downed the water Harry offered him in one gulp, took one last look at Louis in the yard - who’d flipped his obvious fatigue into an attempt to lift Jacob from the ground with his feet to simulate flying - and headed for the door. Wherever that was.

“Are you okay?” Harry said, emphasis on ‘you’. “I feel like my list is getting very long. I feel,” he continued, “like eventually I’ll only be able to sell you Wonder bread and band aids.”

“Bread makes you fat,” Zayn deadpanned.

“Zayn.”

“I’m fine.”

Harry nodded, not like he believed him, but like he didn’t and was too polite to point that out. “Can you paint another one like that for Mari? I think there should be one on the other wall.”

Zayn nodded, too.

“Cool.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

 

It took three whole weeks before the Haley House Curse caught up with Liam.

He was installing the spring on one of the roller doors in the two car garage - a two car garage, by the way, off a one lane road, but Liam was trying to stop taking constant stock of the house’s numerous inequities with its surrounding town. So, he was installing the spring and ignoring economic injustice when it snapped back and shot a clean slice across the side of his right hand.  

It happened so fast he didn’t notice it. He didn’t notice it until he went to wipe some sweat off his forehead and left behind a streak of something thick and sticky across his brow. It was gushing at a quite surprising rate. Unreasonable, actually, if Liam were being honest. He grabbed for a rag sat under the garage door gears waiting to be installed, hesitated in wondering if it being soaked in dirt and oil would affect a widely open wound. Blood was already dripping down his forearm and pooling in the hinge of his elbow. He was getting no reception on his cell.

Next door to the Haley House was a line of three similar houses with similar inequities in the form of two tier front porches and hot tubs on the roof. One was also mid-construction, one had a for sale sign out front, and at the third one, Liam knocked to no answer. An expensive black SUV eyed him from the driveway in judgment. No one on this street was going to open their door to a bleeding man, least of all a bleeding stranger who put garage doors together for work. His right hand grew numb at the same time as his manual transmission car grew into an increasingly irresponsible purchase. He continued to walk farther down the road.

A half mile on at the nearest cross street the sun conspired with the blood loss to make Liam start to feel faint. Visions ensued of what it’d be like to die in these lakeside woods on a job all alone and, frankly, Liam was having a hard time imagining that as so bad. Call it unflinching optimism, but he genuinely hadn’t felt a breeze like this in centuries, and there was a rather pleasant looking squirrel on the opposite side of the road who might, in his last moments, be his friend. Also maybe Reinbech Creative Concepts would be sued violently for negligence and employee endangerment, and that could be something his sister could gleefully regale him with when they met again in the afterlife.

Finally, after what seemed like several minutes and pints of blood past the main lakeside road, Liam saw the telltale signs of life. The roadside brush broke in the beginnings of a long and rural drive. A mailbox hidden in a bush lacked a house number. Farther up the way a pile of scrap wood looked too insubstantial to make a fire but had an air of intentional stacking nonetheless, and soon enough Liam spotted a dark red front door.

The first thing he thought was, this is a home. Not like those show-off monstrosities monopolizing the water. The house was a single story ranch with a wood shingle siding that looked like it’d taken a beating the way Cape houses do by the ocean. The yard was overgrown squarely to the point of seeming inviting - too long to be suburban and rigid but manicured enough not to be “shotgun on the porch.” There was no car in the drive, which Liam at first took as a bad sign. But the house, the house itself had such a warm face - it was the only way he could think to describe it - that he held out hope that someone would be inside and that that someone would share a god damn bandage before he bled out in a stranger’s front yard.

His first knock echoed off the rusted screen door into the depths of the house and harkened no one. He gave its potential occupant the benefit of the doubt and eased the screen door open, compensating for a missing hinge by resting its edge on the front step, knocking on the interior door with much more authority.

But no one came.

No one was home. Liam settled down onto the concrete and started to contemplate the distance drive to the highway he’d have to achieve shifting with his elbow at the same time as he melodramatically considered the last song he’d want to hear off his phone before he fell down dead on this step. It wasn’t the unbearable loneliness of it all that was starting to tarnish his optimistic sheen. It was more so the randomness if anything. That thought that something as mundane as the spring off a garage door could wield so much power. Private Eyes by Hall and Oates, probably. Or else that Whitney Houston song his sister used to always choreograph dances to when they were kids. The squirrel from across the road hopped up the driveway now towards a nearby tree. He probably was sensing the end.

“You bleeding?”

Liam’s heart shot straight to his throat. Sat in the grass just around the edge of the house was a boy. Or a man. Or a woodland creature imagined in Shakespearean plays that manifested when someone was about to cross over to another realm. His face was covered in a wild layer of scruff, his grown-out hair shoved under a gray knit hat. The flannel shirt drawn around him seemed to be keeping more in than his frail shoulders and more out than the lake’s crisp breeze. In front of him, some of the scraps of wood from the pile at the end of the drive were fashioned into a frame. He was painting something in between them.

“Have you been sitting there this whole time?”

Liam’s vision didn’t answer.

“Well. Yes. I am. It was actually a kind of an emergency really, which is I why I wondered if you - “ He reconsidered the accusatory line. “No matter. Would you happen to have a bandage I could use to stop the, you know, dying at your front door?”

As he rose to his feet, Liam considered that this person, whoever he was, seemed like an organic extension of the home. He was beautiful, at one point. Handcrafted with love, set someplace grand, intended to harbor wonderful memories. But he had been mishandled or led astray or left out too long and surrounded by things that didn’t suit him, so he’d retreated into disrepair - any beautiful thing’s natural armor - and allowed himself to grow invisible in brush.

Without a word, the man disappeared into the house and shut the door.

Liam stood clutching his hand - blood now running down his left arm, too - and wondering if he was meant to follow or meant to leave or meant to continue to wither on the lawn. Just as he turned to the squirrel to confer, the door swung open again and the man gave him a meaningful if not slightly exasperated look that best aligned with, “Come inside already.”

So he did.

The inside of the place matched the outside perfectly. There was a fireplace that looked like it was mainly being used to hold things, a comfortable old recliner with an indeterminate original color, and a stack of books mixed with magazines alongside it that all looked well read, deeply thoughtful and important. But above all that there was art. Or else that’s what Liam could think to call it. Smudged lines of paint across canvases housed in homemade frames of scrap wood. Sculptures from found objects and welded metal that made rockets and sundials and birds. Every corner housed a contraption that wasn’t quite a lamp or a night sky speckled with the glinting chain links of an old swing, and Liam stood in the center of it, transfixed by it all until a drop of his own blood speckled the hardwood floor and he hurried to follow his stranger into the next room.

The man was bent over a kitchen drawer, unearthing a variety of medical supplies and setting them in a neat row on the counter. Liam took the liberty of running his hand under a stream of cold water in the sink, the red runoff passing nothing but days and days of lightly used mugs.

“Dry it,” the man said with quiet authority, and Liam looked around for something with which to do just that.

“I don’t want to get blood on one of your towels,” he said.

The man nodded towards a worn floral dishcloth hung off the nearest kitchen chair.

“That one’s already got blood on it.”

Liam turned the faucet off significantly.

But the man’s steady expression didn’t waver.

“Metal work,” he said by way of explanation, and Liam thought of the not-lamp and the sculptures in the other room.

It was a thin story at best, told in a manner that no way demonstrated an awareness of just how easily its teller could be confused for a reclusive serial killer. But Liam was aware of his lack of leverage in this situation, so he grabbed the blood towel and dried his hand.

No sooner had he removed it, bracing himself for a clearer look at the wound, than the man had replaced it with a clean bandage, taped tightly on all four sides, wrapped quickly in gauze and taped again. Liam marveled at his seamless work while this stranger fished a bottle out of the drawer from which all this magic had been produced and held it up for Liam to inspect.

“You got pain killers?”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “Metal sculpting must be violent work.”

“These I just need to sleep.”

Fair. “Uh, well, no. I have those. Though I could use some feeling of any kind in this hand to get myself to the hospital.” He squeezed his fingers together as best he could but the bandage was holding his hand firmly in place. It was the better way for it to heal.

“You new?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been around 25 years now, if that’s considered new.” He was still marveling at the way the bandages held when he wiggled his fingers. “My gran would say so, but I feel pretty old most days. I think it’s just from how I think of things, if you know what I mean. But anyway, new to here, yeah. Well, a few months now. Well, that’s not all that much time.” He rambled when he was nervous. He chalked it up to the bloody dishcloth thing.

“You working on those houses?”

“The Haley House, yeah. Finishing up there anyway. Have you gotten a look?”

The man nodded slowly. It was either bored or annoyed or some other emotion only Shakespearean woodland creatures could express.

“Well we’re there, yes. It’s cursed.” He held up his hand. “So it’s taken quite some time, but we hope to be done by the winter. Have to be really. A lot harder in the snow.”

“How many of you are there?” This question was directed to the kitchen table. Liam wasn’t sure how he felt about being part of an unnamed collective in that sentence.

“Well,” he said, “there’s me. There’s a chainsaw. A handsaw as well; he’s a real cut up. Then there’s the wood chipper who, of course, is a bit hard to get to know but I think more misunderstood than anything.”

“You’re the only one working on that house?”

“Yeah.”

“With a chainsaw, a manual saw, and a wood chipper?”

“Mm hm.”

“And you don’t have a fucking first aid kit?”

Liam could honestly say that was the first time that had occurred to him. The only thing he could think to do by way of response was hysterically laugh. The stranger cracked his own surreptitious smile. He pulled an empty sewing box from under the sink and started filling it with bandages and disinfectant.

“Oh, no,” Liam sputtered from a laugh. “No no, I can go into town and buy some. As soon as my hand, you know…” He gave his fingers another experimental wiggle.

But the man had already slammed the box shut and held it out for Liam to take.

“You know,” he said. “The curse.”

“Well. You’re not wrong,” Liam said and took the box with his one good hand. “Well. Thanks. You know. For stopping the bleeding.”

The man nodded. Liam interpreted it as, “Okay you can go.” So he walked for the door.

“I’ll return it, the box, everything.”

“Don’t.” He’d started moving things around the living room with what Liam assumed was some kind of purpose but which, to him, looked like completely random busy work. He really did fit in here. Stood between the makeshift lamp and the pile of literature he looked like just another strange object in his own eclectic home.

“It’s Liam, by the way,” Liam said, not entirely sure of his own point. “My name is Liam. Yours?”

He was answered with either a smile, a grimace, or a strange marriage of the two. His stranger just shook his head.

“I think I’m gonna stick with the Guy Who Stopped The Bleeding.”

Liam laughed wryly. “Well, Guy Who Stopped The Bleeding, you are wonderfully un-self-aware. Never change. I’ll drop this back off tomorrow.”

“Really. Don’t.”

“See you then.”

The squirrel escorted Liam half of the way home. 


	4. CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

 

The next day treated Liam a little more kindly. Fall was starting to take over this already crisp lakeside town. The hot coffee he grabbed on the way to the job site became more of a necessity in protecting his newly healing hand from the morning chill. Dew still clung to the grass unfrosted, but it sprinkled cold pinpricks on his ankles as he went around to the backyard to finish laying the brick patio. The only injury to speak of was a nicked elbow on a jagged piece of unfinished siding. Liam smiled to himself retrieving a band-aid from his gifted, makeshift first aid kit, and resolved to pick up his own supplies and return these to his stranger as soon as he’d finished his work.

It was possible he did better on his own. As the hours wore on, he finished the patio, capped the siding, and hung an entire face of shutters aside the back windows. He was so determined to prove his own self sufficiency, he didn’t even eat lunch until well after 4. He thought about calling Ruth and telling her about his accomplishments, but there were two primary reasons that he wouldn’t. For one, there was no reception here, a lesson he should have had cemented into his head after yesterday’s near death experience. But for another, he knew why he’d be doing it. Not because he was proud of what he’d done, though he was. But because Ruth’s insistence that he find a friend in this empty town still haunted him, as did every other similar insistence she’d made in every other random town he’d been to over the past two and a half years. He’d be calling her to try to prove he was perfectly happy on his own, which of course he wasn’t. And even if he was, righteous bragging didn’t suit him. So, he wrote out a text to her that he’d send back at the motel that read, “Only hurt meself twice so far!” and finished his lunch to the sound of slowly lapping water and rustling leaves.

Liam had never been in Wesley’s Corner Store without a band of rowdy co-workers. So, when he visited nearing dusk, he was surprised and charmed by how sleepy and welcoming it was. The usual guy manned the register, this time accompanied by several of his implied dozens of children. Liam glanced around the store for his wife, but as usual she was nowhere to be found. He was curious to know the person on the phone, who seemed to always be calling, who got such a big smile off this already pleasant man.

“Hello!” Liam waved. The usual guy waved back like they were old friends.

The first aid aisle was all the way in the back. Liam scanned the shelves, stomach knotting a bit at all the options, trying to remember what his stranger had included in his kit to give him some kind of guidance. Excessive variety always made Liam anxious.

As he compared labels on two seemingly identical disinfecting ointments, a small child with a shock of natural hair and penetrating dark eyes poked around the corner to watch him. Liam played pretend that he didn’t notice. Without taking his eyes off one of the boxes of ointment, he reached his injured hand to grab a third box off the shelf, tossed it in the air, and seamlessly began to juggle.

The kid giggled. He stayed hidden behind the shelf, only his hair and eyes visible. Liam didn’t look yet; he thought that might make the kid nervous. Instead, he threw one box around his back and caught it mid-air. Then he faked a fumble and tossed the smallest of the boxes in the little boy’s direction. The kid stumbled from his hiding place and caught the box in his two tiny hands. Liam finally chanced a peek at him out the corner of his eye.

“You’re a natural,” he said.

The kid smiled and ran away.

Up at the front, Liam lined the counter with the items he’d selected from the back, picturing his stranger doing the same back on his kitchen counter. Lastly, he placed an extra bottle of painkillers, and looked up satisfied at the owner.

“Oh!” Liam said. “One of your little ones has a box of disinfectant. Don’t want him to get into it.”

The owner scanned each of his children and found one absent. “Wash?” The little boy appeared around a corner. “Did you put the medicine back?” The little boy nodded shyly. “Thank you, love.”

Liam watched the boy back away down the aisle, still a little transfixed by Liam and his earlier juggling. “They’re all very lovely kids,” he said.

“Thank you,” said the owner. “I’m Harry, by the way.”

“Hello, Harry! I’m Liam.” The oldest of the kids ran by brandishing a foam sword at the little girl, who was laughing, elated. “Is it just the three of them then?”

“‘Just’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe them most days,” said Harry, with a grin.

The two ran back in the direction they came. “I could see that.” He thought of little Wash back in the aisle. “Are they all, uh, you know…”

“Adopted?” Harry finished.

Liam was relieved to see Harry still smiling. Liam’s curiosity had a way of making him ask questions not usually allowed in polite conversation. “Yes, exactly.”

“Yes,” Harry answered. “Lou and I felt better about it than surrogacy.”

“And Lou’s your - ?”

“Husband,” Harry interrupted, in the rare way that interrupting can be a kindness.

Liam’s stomach did a little flip at his barely escaped faux pas. A town like this, he thought, and made sure to nod at Harry’s clarification to indicate he was okay with it, even though Harry didn’t seem like the sort of person who was waiting for such approval. He didn’t seem like the sort of person easily turned off by another’s misstep either. This was turning out to be a pleasant surprise of a conversation.

Wash walked up from the aisle again and stood next to Liam to watch his father bag the rest of Liam’s things and give him his change. Liam parsed out a quarter, nodded to the toy and candy machines by the door and held the quarter up to Harry for permission. Harry nodded.

“Here you go, Wash.” Liam plucked a bouncing ball from one of the slots. Wash held it delicately like it might fly away. “You just start by tossing it up and catching it, and when you’re ready, I’ll get you another one, okay?”

“Okay,” Wash replied, and ran away back down the aisle.

Harry was watching them. It was actually amazing how Harry seemed able to keep an eye on all of them at once. “Thank you,” he said to Liam. “You don’t know how rare that is from him.”

“Well, I got a sense,” Liam said. He didn’t want to be presumptuous, but he had, himself, been quite a shy child.

“Did you, uh, need help with something out there on the site?” Harry said. “It looks a little bit like...someone has died.”

“No!” Liam laughed. “No, no one has - well, it’s actually just me out there. I’m alive and well. Well, maybe not well. Hurt me hand yesterday.” He held up the bandaged remains to demonstrate. “But it’s healing up just fine, so at least there’s that.”

“You used the last on that then, eh?”

“Actually no, this fella - wait. You know what?” Liam spun to take in the contents of the store. Wash reminded him a bit of someone else as well. “I need a gift.”

 

*      *      *

 

It was nearly dark by the time Liam got back out to the lake, past the job site, and to the house of his helpful yet potentially sociopathic savior from the day before. He pulled from the passenger side seat of his old Camaro the sewing box of lightly used first aid supplies and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red he’d gotten from a locked shelf at the corner store. Sure, it wasn’t the finest there was out there, but it was definitely the best he was going to find in this town. So, he headed to the front step, the screen door still precariously perched off its hinge as Liam had left it. He wondered if this guy had been out of the house at all today. He wondered if he was home right now. He wondered if he even existed, or if Liam had fixed up his own hand but projected it onto an imaginary spirit guide as part of an elaborate, blood-loss-fueled fever dream.

He gave the front door a knock.

And then a louder one.

He looked to the side of the house to see if The Guy Who Stopped The Bleeding was once again sitting in the yard building something and ignoring Liam completely until it became clear he was in another dire mess.

But he was nowhere to be found. And Liam couldn’t identify the exact reason why this made him so disappointed. He peered into the front window, a bold and slightly rude move, but a necessary one in confirming he wasn’t starting to go mad out here in the woods alone. No. There were the sculptures and the stacks of books and maybe, somewhere down the hall if it wasn’t a trick of the light, the glow of a distant lamp that indicated someone was, in fact, in the house.

Liam stared for a second at the bottle in his hand before setting it and the sewing kit neatly down on the front step and running back to his car. He returned one more time to place a folded note on top of the gift then he drove off back to the motel. The note read:

 

To:  The Guy Who Stopped The Bleeding

Thank you again for not allowing me to die on your front lawn.

From:  Liam or The Guy Who Kept Bleeding For A Bit Anyway, Despite Our Best Efforts

 

*      *      *

 

The following morning, Liam was up early, practically with the sun. He was grateful, for once, to not be accountable to anyone, as he tied on his running shoes and traced a path to the water on his phone.

The roads were easy enough to follow so as not to get lost, but not so marked as to make the run seem like any less of an exploration than it was. Liam found more interesting houses, town parks set back in the woods, boat docks and side of the road dives than he could have imagined fit into such an empty town. He heaved lungs full of fresh fall air and imagined who was in every run down home as he passed. The usual monotony of a treadmill or even a run through the city completely disappeared. Hill after hairpin turn uncovered a new part of this place Liam had not yet known existed. He was learning things he loved about being here as he was expelling all the old things he didn’t - the trying to get along with his coworkers, the Haley House curse, the sense of being taken advantage of. By the time he reached the lake - and it was a truly awe inspiring sight to be sure - Liam was a different person than had left his motel that morning. He’d left too much out on the road and filled too much else back in. He walked part of the way back along the nearly 4 mile path until he had the energy to run again. At the intersection with Route 19, Liam took a different turn and headed to Harry’s instead.

“No kids today?” he called, headed to the fridge.

“My sister’s in town,” Harry called back, and Liam enjoyed the ease with which Harry engaged him in casual conversation. He didn’t even give him one of those “why are you talking to me” sort of looks.

“Well, let me know how Wash is doing with Juggling 101.”

“I will.”

It sounded like maybe Harry was going to say more but Liam couldn’t be sure. His back was to the counter now, and he was transfixed by all the Gatorade flavors in front of him. His mind began an oft repeated war between its familiar favoritism towards red and its peer pressure to try another color. Back by the front of the store he heard voices, but he couldn’t really see past the decision in front of him. His stomach did that annoying tense thing again. He tried to take a few deep breaths and remind himself it was just a lousy flavor of juice.

“Hey.”

He opened the refrigerator door like maybe doing so would make the decision for him. It didn’t. Condensation started to form on the glass, a physical sign of his indecision.

“Hey.”

“Zayn - “

Finally he reached for the red one and yanked it from the shelf. Making literally any decision helped him feel better. Just as the cloud of stress started to dissipate and he closed the fridge door, a hand slammed on the glass next to him and pulled him unwillingly all the way back to the present.

“I said hey.”

It was the woodland creature. The metal-working sociopath. The guy who stopped the bleeding from Liam’s hand.

“Oh. Hi!”

“Is that your idea of a fucking joke?”

For a brief and very confused moment Liam thought he was referring to the red Gatorade. He still wasn’t entirely fine with his own decision, to be honest.

“I - “

But finally he noticed that his stranger was pointing to the front counter where stood Harry - a rare frown on his face - and Liam’s gifted bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.

“Well,” he started, though he wasn’t entirely sure how to answer the question. “I know you said you didn’t want anything but - “

“Why did you tell him? Did you tell him?”

Liam knew how to answer this question even less. Then he realized the guy was addressing Harry.

“Zayn, he had no idea - I had no idea - “ Harry started.

“Take it back.” This was directed back to Liam.

“Okay,” Liam said, though he had no idea why he was doing so. “Whatever you want, it was just a gift.”

“I told you not to come back.” He was already halfway back across the store.

“I just wanted to say thank you.”

“I don’t care.” He was now to the door.

“Thank you for bringing it back, Zayn,” Harry called after him.

Zayn - as was apparently his name - was already too far to hear clearly, but Liam believed he’d said “go fuck yourself” or something similarly inappropriate as a response to “thank you.” By the time Liam got to the front of the store himself, Harry was leaning against the back wall, running a hand through his hair, still with that uncharacteristic frown.

“You can’t - ” he started to say. He reassessed. “I didn’t realize the guy you were giving that to was Zayn. He...has had some very public…”

Liam found he was even more uneasy about all of this than he usually would be - and he would usually be quite uncomfortable indeed - because Harry was lost for words, and one didn’t have to know Harry all that long to know it was unlikely to see him shaken. Liam got the sense he’d done something more grave than just a misstep. He didn’t want to leave because he wanted to know what he had done, but he didn’t want to stay because he couldn’t face it, and as always the indecision was paralyzing him. So he stood there with Harry in the front of the store waiting for the storm cloud of Zayn’s brief visit to dissipate, hoping he hadn’t ruined the one, small friendship he’d managed to start in several lousy years.

Finally, Harry spoke. “Hey. Lou’s back on Friday. You wanna come over and have dinner with us? Wash would love to see you.”

“Will Zayn be there?” Liam didn’t mean to sound so bitter. He got mad at himself immediately. He just didn’t want another incident like that.

Harry just smiled wryly. “He will not.”

“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “Of course. Yes. Of course. I’d love to meet everyone and… that’s so nice of you. Yes. Thank you. Can I bring anything?”

Harry shrugged. “Something to drink?”

They laughed. Liam didn’t think there could be someone more opposite to him in the world, except maybe the hurricane that had just blown through. Harry was so easy, always knew the exact right thing to say. That and the invitation helped keep the gnawing guilt and discomfort at bay as Liam walked the rest of the way back to his motel with his same old red Gatorade and an egg white omelette from the diner.

But by the time he sat down at his little table for one, it was haunting him. What did he do wrong? How was he supposed to know? Of course he was supposed to know. But how? What can he do to fix it? Should he even try? It felt like all the awful conversations he’d been trying to have with strangers for years, and he hated it, and he hated himself for hating it and not just figuring it out already so he could meet a nice interesting guy in an unusual but memorable way and finally have a significant story to tell, something to show he hadn’t just spent his life waking up, getting a red Gatorade, going to work, coming home and eating at a motel room table alone.

He sorted through his suitcase and tried to find something appropriate for dinner on Friday. He tried to distract himself wondering what Harry’s husband was like, planning out the best way to teach Wash how to juggle. And with all that he was able to push the sunken feeling in his gut back just a little again, give himself some room to breathe, until he went to bed and it all came rushing back in.

 

*      *      *

 

There were some things Zayn had to hide even from himself.

For instance, all of the things on the list Harry kept under the counter at Wesley’s.

For another instance, the numbers for his drug dealer, the self-destructive male model who’d introduced him to the drug dealer, and the sycophantic publicist who’d facilitated the male model who’d introduced him to the drug dealer - all never memorized and long since deleted from his phone. They’d be on matchbooks passed in back bars somewhere amongst his things still in storage in the city. He had hidden the key to that as well, miles away from this cabin by this lake in the woods, and tried every day to not call his mother and beg to know where it was.

Lastly, a list of another kind. Really, it was just a series of etched markings on the wood panel wall behind the first painting he ever did in this house, hung over the fireplace. He couldn’t remember what had gone into deciding on this particular hidden thing, probably because he had been drunk or high or just plain delusional when he’d started it. But what he did remember to this day was that he was to make an etch on this wall behind this painting every time he messed up. It wasn’t overtly contracted, but he had with himself a tacit agreement that if the etches ever numbered all the way to the other side of the painting, he’d fuck the whole thing.

Not the list. The whole thing. He’d just give up.

Drink. Smoke. Get high. Stop sleeping. Stop giving a shit how he treated people. Stop seeing people at all. Bad food. Great sex. No morals. A constant rise until the fall. For real this time. None of this cry for help shit. Just let go. It’d be terrible. But short. And some days short seemed like the priority. Some days that felt a fucking great idea.

When he got back from the store - from yelling at that nice guy who’d needed his help and from once again leading Harry to question why he’d bothered being friends with Zayn in the first place - Zayn pushed aside the painting over the mantle, pulled out his pocket knife, and made one more etch on the wooden wall. They now numbered half way across.

He observed that - gave it its proper non verbal acknowledgment - then lit a cigarette and let the painting hide the list once more from sight and mind. He was getting awfully good at that. Forgetting who he was and where he’d been. Selective memory was a wonderful thing. It meant he could get to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Though the altercation at Wesley’s had haunted Liam a majority of the week, dinner with Harry and his husband did a good job of clearing away what it could. Louis prepared a three course meal he’d ordered as a kit of pre-measured ingredients through some fancy service in the city. He made uncertain faces at a roast chicken, jumped at the sparking hot oil of some stir-fried vegetables, all while going on about Harry’s penchant for over-promising and under-delivering in a way that seemed like it were one of Louis’s favorite things about him.

Harry laughed at all the creative ways Louis dug into him from a comfortable seat at the dining table with one of Liam’s gifted beers. The kids ran circles around the whole scene, stopping occasionally to complete small preparatory tasks Louis set in front of them. Liam clutched his own bottle and got comfortably warm from the alcohol and the easy way with which this entire family made him feel welcome. He thought a lot about asking about Zayn, but every time he started, he veered away from that unpleasant topic and asked about them instead. How they’d met (in school; Louis hated him at first but was eventually attracted to Harry’s unwavering refusal to hate him, too). Which kids they’d adopted when (Mari and Wash together first; Jacob only 6 months ago). How they’d developed their plan to turn Louis’s inheritance and half decade of income as an investment banker into a quiet life that would raise their kids well, suit Harry’s low maintenance nature, and stop Louis’s panic attacks.

Everything around the table was so easily shared that soon Liam had launched into his own story - his humble upbringing, the alienating nature of his ambition, how hard he usually found it to talk to people. No one gave a single sidelong glance or passive aggressive suggestion. Harry just joked about how Louis was the interpreter of Harry’s own strange way of talking at parties, and Louis goaded Liam into showing both Wash and himself how to juggle. Liam didn’t head out until close to midnight.

By then the glass of scotch that came with dessert seemed to have had worn off enough. He flipped the heat on in his car, and it struggled to life. He waited for the car to warm, running his bandaged hand along the steering wheel in an idle motion. He flicked the radio onto the oldies station. No matter how hard he tried, his unasked questions sat leaden in his gut. He wanted to know how Harry met Zayn. He wanted to know why Zayn had been so offended by Liam’s gift. He wanted to know if it was possible to not offend Zayn, as in their short acquaintance Liam seemed uncannily apt to do it. And as a steady beat through all of that, Liam wanted to stop thinking about it so much. He wanted to appreciate the easy friendship put in front of him, not pursue one that seemed like it was going to hurt.

For the first time in his 25 years, here in this lukewarm car idling outside Harry’s and Louis’s vast and welcoming home, Liam approached the idea that friendships were difficult for him because he made them that way. Not because he was awkward but because he wasn’t satisfied with what came easy. Not because he was misunderstood, but because he craved a connection that was very, very hard won.

He didn’t even realize he was headed back towards the job site until the Haley House popped into view. Liam’s headlights swept across the face of it and he allowed himself one moment to acknowledge his superior trim work. Then he turned the Camaro down Zayn’s dead end road.

The screen door was still exactly the way he’d first left it. This time there was no mistaking it - there was a light on in the living room window.

Liam pounded on the door.

And again.

He didn’t know whether he was utterly baffled or not surprised at all that Zayn was still pretending he was unable to answer. Liam backed into the yard to get a better look into the living room. The last dregs of the scotch coursing through his system made it easier to do what came natural to his impatient and yet rarely forward nature.

“Hey!” Liam called, and his voice echoed into a chorus of chirping crickets.

Zayn still wasn’t coming to the door.

“I said hey!” Liam mimicked him, and he saw a shift in light that seemed to indicate movement in the room.

A few short moments later and the door was opened. Just that. Not thrown open, not torn from its hinges. Just opened like Zayn were maybe expecting to sign for a package. He was in sweats and a thin t-shirt, and Liam saw arms full of tattoos and hints of tattoos elsewhere that he hadn’t noticed before. Liam was staring. He was drunker than he had initially assessed.

“Well,” Zayn said in a quiet and even tone. “Now who’s acting like a fucking psychopath?”

“I,” Liam said in a defiant slur, “was very nice to you.”

“Okay.”

“I wanted to say thank you - “

“You’re welcome.”

“ - and I didn’t know anything about you! How was I supposed to - what? What did you just say?”

Zayn sighed. “I said you’re welcome. You happy? Can you sleep now?”

“I - “ The question had come with a quiet smile that gave Liam a moment’s pause. “Yes? I suppose so? Thanks?”

Zayn smiled again. “You’re welcome.” His light brown eyes, bright with the lamp light caught from the living room, slid up and down Liam, taking in his state. “Where you been tonight?”

Liam ran his hand down his shirt front like smoothing the wrinkles would make him seem less drunk. “Harry’s, actually. Came round for dinner.”

“You wanna come inside?”

Liam had hardly finished his second sentence before this invite came out. It all coupled with the crickets and the cool air and the nearly unlit landscape of Zayn’s front lawn to color the moment significant, even if Liam didn’t quite understand why.

“Sober up before you head back,” Zayn finished. And Liam felt safe to nod.

“Okay.”

*      *     *

If this was the sort of reckless behavior Zayn settled for in his sobriety, so be it. He watched Liam from the doorway, closely inspecting Zayn’s art around the living room with that try-too-hard focus that comes when you’re still making your way out of drunk. He kept running a hand over his stomach; it was distracting. Then again, that was why Zayn had asked him in in the first place, to be distracted. Some nights he lacked the willpower to make all the right decisions. And as he’d said, out of all the possibilities, this seemed like a pretty innocuous wrong one.

“Do you - do you - “ Liam was stuttering, wagging a finger at a painting in the corner. “Is this water color? My sister, she paints a bit. Oil paints I think. Then again I only know the two kinds, and this one doesn’t look like that. Her’s are a bit thicker, aren’t they? Or they are when you smear them on the uh, the uh...thing. Acrylic. That’s another one I remember. Are there more kinds than that? There must be. I’ve seen a ton of paintings, and I’d think they’d all look more similar if there weren’t.”

Okay, so maybe it was less innocuous than he thought. He tried not to think too much about all the ways he could corrupt it and focused instead on carrying on a conversation. That was hard enough; it was not his favorite thing to do.

“It is water color.”

Liam’s face lit up with wonder, at being right or at Zayn having given him a real answer. Either way, it made Zayn feel a bit like shit.

“That’s incredible,” he said. “I’m brilliant. How long have you been painting for then?”

Zayn swallowed hard. “So, Harry really didn’t tell you anything then?”

It took a second for Liam to draw the connection. “No,” he said, insistent.

“Okay,” Zayn nodded. At this strange hour, this stranger’s soft brown eyes lingering suspiciously on his sharper ones, the risk of inviting someone in already behind him, Zayn chose to believe him. He took a few steps into the living room and leaned on the edge of his chair as Liam watched him. Zayn knew he was making Liam nervous. He chose to let that happen as well. “Where’re you staying, then?”

“Motel on 19.”

“By yourself?”

Liam tilted his head. “Thought the ‘by myself’ part was obvious by the desperate bleeding.”

Zayn smirked at the sarcasm. “I meant they don’t let your family come with you.”

Liam shrugged. “Haven’t really got one.”

“Oh.”

“You?”

It felt like a thousand foot climb to answer that question. “Thought the ‘by myself’ part was obvious by the weird bloody towel.”

Liam’s smile split his face wide open. This was one of their many differences, which Zayn had taken tally of during the few minutes of acquaintance they had between them. Zayn’s smile was more hidden, like passing on a secret. He was currently giving a lot away.

“So, just to be clear,” Liam said, continuing his constitutional around the art in the living room, “you’re then NOT going to tell me why you got so mad at me earlier at Harry’s store?”

Zayn shook his head.

“And you’re not gonna tell me your name, even though I’ve deduced from Harry yelling at you earlier that it is, in fact, Zayn?”

Another secret. “Guess I don’t have to, then.”

“Will you at least tell me when you moved here?”

“A while ago.”

“And you’ve always been here alone?”

He nodded.

“And you’ve done all this art here in that time?”

Zayn picked that one not to answer.

“Hm.” Liam seemed to catch on to the game. He studied Zayn’s sculptures like they would answer the questions Zayn would not, and honestly maybe they would. Zayn just watched Liam make the rounds until he reached the other side of the chair, opposite him. He leaned his knees on the other arm, jostled the chair and Zayn with it.

“Well, I don’t want to keep you from your evening. Morning? What were you doing before I interrupted you with my shouts?”

Zayn nodded to his book on the seat.

“The word ‘reading’ would have been a...huge inconvenience…” Liam muttered, picking the book up to study it. Zayn forgot what it even was. He craned his neck to look at the spine himself but got lost in Liam’s hand gripping it instead.

In fact, this invitation could prove to have been an unwise thing to do. The thing with Zayn was that that sort of realization didn’t have the same effect it had on other people. Back pedaling wasn’t in his wheelhouse. Zayn only drove over cliffs.

“You wanna see the backyard?”

Liam tossed the book back down without hesitation. “100%.”

The chill in the air was beyond welcome. As soon as they got out the door Zayn put distance between them, heading towards the side of the yard. Liam noted the sculptures around the lawn as well as the stacks of spare parts and scraps that might one day become one. Zayn averted his attention to the moon glowing brighter than usual from over the horizon line created by the trees. It washed everything in a lonely, crisp blue. His eyes found the edge of a wheel rim that caught and amplified the light back in a blinding shine. Add a half dozen colors, more scrap metal he had in the front yard; he was so distracted with ideas he didn’t at first notice the warmth of Liam’s proximity. Didn’t notice it until he backed up a step and their shoulders brushed.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Liam only smiled. “You ever go back in these woods?”

“Hell no,” Zayn replied, eyebrows drawn together.

“Why not?”

“Look at them,” he said. “They’re scary as hell.”

“Aw, no, they’re interesting!”

And before Zayn could say another word, Liam was at the forest’s edge, poking a head in as though worried he’d be impolite. Zayn followed tentatively behind him, and when Liam took a handful of confident steps into the dark brush, Zayn took one confident one to match. He planted himself against the first tree he reached and tried to make his lean look as casual as possible. After a few moments of exploration, Liam made his way back to him, and once again took up a post just opposite Zayn.

“I can’t really see much.” Liam smiled. And all at once Zayn was drowning in the inescapable, desperate desire to be drunk right now.

If he were drunk right now he wouldn’t be pressed against this tree; he’d be pressed against Liam against the other one. He’d already have his fingers woven in back of Liam’s hair; he wouldn’t have even waited for confirmation that he’d be into it. In Zayn’s past experience, for him, confirmation wasn’t required. In fact, if Zayn had been drunk, he doubted they’d have ever gotten out here in the first place. “You wanna come inside?” would have been replaced with his hand clutched on Liam’s belt, pulling his hips to Zayn’s, every other part of them to follow. If Zayn were drunk making it as far as the living room would have been a miracle. And he’d certainly have a lot fucking easier of a time finding something to say to Liam, still smiling on the opposite tree.

But Zayn wasn’t drunk; Liam was. What’s more, the all-encompassing desire for a drink, something Zayn hadn’t experienced in quite some time now, was making his usually cold and awkward demeanor even worse. His confidence was shit. He had a gorgeous guy in front of him - an actual fucking scruffy construction working GQ star just like us - and he was useless.

“This,” Liam said, cutting off Zayn’s downward spiral, “is one gorgeous house.”

It was a genuinely surprising comment. “Yeah?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Liam led them both from the shadows of their trees. “First of all, excellent foundation. I mean just very solid, you can tell.”

“YOU can tell,” Zayn corrected him.

“Well. True. Yeah. But also,” he continued, Zayn at his heels as he skirted the back of the house, “the siding - you can’t really tell in this light - but it’s a very unique wash. You see this style a lot in New England, out in America, but not quite in this finish. It’s like a fisherman’s hut or like a cabin in an old Hollywood movie. It’s a work of art in and of itself, and art, I think, is something you could totally notice. To be honest, I’m a bit jealous I didn’t build it myself.”

“You design the house you’re working on now?”

“Me? Oh god no. Haven’t the education for that.”

“Does that matter?”

“Well.” Liam seemed to really consider it. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t think it does.”

“Maybe not.” Zayn could hear how he didn’t believe it, and just as violently as his need to drink had overtaken him a minute ago, Zayn was now flooded with the compulsion to wring the neck of the man who’d left Liam on this job alone.

“What would you have done?” Zayn was standing so close at Liam’s side that he could see the shift in his shoulder muscles through his button up.

“To the Haley House?” Liam asked the siding.

“To this one.”

This smile on Liam’s lips came slower, like he were trying to fight it, like it were a secret same as Zayn’s were. What made this one different? What made this one worse?

Liam met his eye again. “Can I see the rest of it?”

Zayn gave away another secret, too. “Yeah.”

*      *      *

Half of the rest of the downstairs of Zayn’s house, Liam had already seen. The kitchen took up most of the back of it; the other corner was a rarely used dining room, windows covered in sheets that drenched the room in darkness, canvases and other art supplies covering the floor and resting against the walls. Off the living room were the stairs that spiraled to the small top floor, only occupying half the length of the house. Under the stairs was a half bath and laundry room piled in Zayn’s discarded clothes.

At the top of the steps Liam immediately faced a much larger bath with a claw foot tub and vanity. Mere steps down the hall and he was in Zayn’s room, the slant of the roof creating a slope in the ceiling under which a twin bed was situated. A closet door stood mostly closed. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a practically Puritan set of drawers. The wall was covered in pencil sketches. Nothing in here was paint or metal.

“Not much to work with,” Zayn said from behind him, giving Liam a small start.

“I really like it,” Liam said, and he meant it. He thought Zayn could tell that, because he didn’t answer and he immediately left the room. Liam gave the room one last lingering look before he followed.

At the very end of the hall a small window let in a modest square of moonlight, and Liam dipped his head to check out the view. Just over the tops of the trees across Zayn’s front yard and the street beyond it he spotted what he thought was the hot tub on one of the houses near the Haley House on the water. He did some quick math in his head, then marched past Zayn to the opposite end of the hall, glancing out a similarly tiny window to confirm what he thought.

He turned back to Zayn, perched on the stairs, an eyebrow raised. Liam was forming the beginnings of an idea.

“You ever go on the roof?”

Within the next quarter of an hour, Liam was half hanging out one of Zayn’s tiny hallway windows. It was situated conveniently just a few feet from the lower roof, the one over the living room and the kitchen, and Liam being the taller of the two, he thought it best he test the distance first.

Turned out it was easy, just a step over really if you straddle the window sill and stretch your left leg just a little bit longer. Liam made the hop in one try, swinging firmly onto the adjacent roof and peeking back around to guide Zayn.

Zayn did not look ready to be guided.

“What?” Liam said.

“I think you’re good over there alone.”

“That’s not - the whole point is to show you, how am I gonna show you if - no. Come on.” He extended a hand out to try to help him, but that only seemed to terrify him more.

“Dude, you’re gonna lose balance.”

“No, I’m not. Remember the part where I’ve been building an entire house on my damn own? Give me your hand. Just swing your leg out the window and - “

“I’m not as tall as - “

“Well I’m not six nine, Zayn, it’s just a short distance to - “

“Some of us aren’t on fucking roofs every - “

“It’s not an Olympic sport, okay? It’s like eight inches to the - “

“Man. Step back before you lean too far over the - “

“I’m not coming out here alone, you’re - “

“I swear to shit, Liam, get off the - “

“Here.”

He’d leaned far enough to get back to the window and grab hold of Zayn’s hand. For a split second, he had the image of Zayn pulling back, pulling back so hard that Liam would do exactly as Zayn had feared in the first place and slip from the roof. Wouldn’t that just be a fitting end to this whole thing that had started with excessive bleeding?

But he didn’t. Pull back, that is. He was still for a moment - he always seemed to need a few moments more than someone like Liam might to discern what he wanted to do. But then he shifted his hand to be more comfortable in Liam’s, fingers intertwined, and shifted one of his legs to the other side of the window.

Liam smiled. “Well done.”

Zayn scoffed. “Say that when I don’t die.”

Of course, in one pretty easy step, Zayn was on the other side of the roof with Liam, the released nerves exhaled in a warm breath on Liam’s cheek. In the instant between that and the step Liam took back to give him a bit of distance, it really hit Liam where he was, what he’d said so far, what he’d done. To this point, he’d been hiding from Zayn, from himself, in the comfortable arms of alcohol, a willing and eager partner on which one can blame any number of ill-advised and unusual behaviours. But now Liam felt more sober than ever. Now, Liam felt each roof shingle, each gust of fall air, in distinct relief. The anxiety of a thousand failed conversations and flirtations before this threatened to bring about another one. In that instant, Liam thought about forgetting the whole thing and going back inside.

What was different about this one? What made this one worse? He wondered that while Zayn experimentally walked the edge of the roof and observed his own backyard from this height. He reached the far side and turned back, a smile, a real one, not a smirk, gracing his lips in what Liam could already deduce was a rare occasion. He looked out to the yard again and back at Liam, some open glee Liam couldn’t define a source for taking over his face.

“I’m up here,” he said simply, and Liam got his answer.

What he wouldn’t give in this moment to know what he’d just done, to hear of the untold milestone walking the roof’s edge had brought about. He knew then he’d never been scared of the weird bloody towel or Zayn’s curt answers. He’d never been annoyed with his outburst at Harry’s store or confused by the easy way Zayn had apologized and welcomed him into this home. Not that these things weren’t mysteries; they were. But wasn’t his unwillingness to laugh good naturedly at his coworkers’ bar-side exploits a mystery to them? Wasn’t his earnestness after years of opportunities to take a cynical turn a mystery to his sister as well? This weird woodland creature in front of him was some overgrown, neglected version of another person who’d tried hard to fit in in ways he’d never manage. The only difference was at some point Zayn got tired and gave up. His attention had long since turned back to the yard, the moon, the view, anywhere but Liam, who stole glance after glance of his stranger, imagining the ways he wanted to touch his hair, ask him questions, listen to his answers until they both fell asleep in front of the fireplace in the front room, Liam a little fuller, Zayn a little less burdened than before.

Zayn caught his eye again, and Liam couldn’t get himself to look away in time. He took a deep breath, felt the cold air fill his lungs, push out the anxiety that gripped his chest as it always did on his morning run. He smiled and saw that smile reflected back at him far demagnified on Zayn’s lips. Liam nodded to the upper roof.

“You can see the lake.”

Zayn raised an eyebrow. “I can?”

“Sure,” Liam said, gauging the siding for the right way to get to their second destination. “That peak in the distance is the top of the house next door to mine. Which means that from this far off, with a little more height, you’d see over their fancy ass roofs right to the water. All the view, none of the uptick in price.”

“So, that’s your idea for renovating my house?”

“Yeah. Well not to just stand on the roof, no. I’d build a roof deck. Right up on the second level. And because there’s foundation deep support beams in both your room and the bathroom on the other side - “ Liam identified a good foothold to get him leverage enough to jump the last few feet to the top story. He pulled himself to a sit on the edge and turned to help Zayn, but Zayn had already followed behind him. “Oh. Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Um,” Liam said. Zayn’s hand brushed his as he pushed himself up to his feet. Liam scrambled to follow. “Well. Yeah, because of the support beams, I wouldn’t even have to level out the roof. I’d just extend those beams up on either side of the peak and, you know…” He outlined the level base of a deck across the width of the upper roof. “...build it out from there.”

“I can’t see it.” Zayn was peering over his backyard again, this time eyes to the horizon.

“Well,” Liam said, “it’s really more - “

He rested his hands on Zayn’s shoulders and turned him to face the side yard instead.

“You’d probably need a foot, foot and a half, to really…”

Zayn’s shoulders lifted under Liam’s hand with the heft of a deep breath. Liam saw his eyes wander to their touch before he looked up at Liam’s face.

“You should do that.”

Liam blinked. “What?”

“Build the deck.”

“Wh - really?”

“Yeah, well I’m not six nine like you - “ Liam laughed. “ - but I think I’d like to see what the hell you’re talking about. And it’s nice up here. So, build the deck.”

Liam didn’t know what to say. If it was one thing he didn’t expect to get when he’d come in tonight it was another job. “I - don’t - “

Zayn turned and accidentally - or not - shrugged Liam’s hands away. “I’ll pay you obviously. Whatever the fuck a roof deck costs. Just buy whatever, the fucking materials, and bill me when you’re done.”

“No,” Liam said without thinking about it. It actually would be kind of a lot of work, especially on top of what he already had left to finish at the job site, but that wasn’t what he meant. “I couldn’t do that. Take money, I mean. But I’ll build it. I mean I’ll do it, I just won’t - “

“I know it’s not the fucking mansions you build, man, but I got the money. Don’t know how the fuck else you think I’m living up here alone without a job.”

“I haven’t really - “

“Or don’t,” Zayn interrupted and turned back toward the edge of the roof. “Whatever you want. Just thought you wanted to work on the house so bad. Thought it’d be cool.”

For all his nerves getting up to the roof, Zayn descended the thing in an instant, so fast Liam didn’t have a chance to respond until they had both slid back inside.

“I’ll do it,” Liam said definitively before Zayn could take the offer all the way back and refuse. “Let me scope out materials, and I’ll quote you a cost.”

“Cool,” Zayn said. He was already to the stairs.

Liam didn’t realize how cold he’d been on the roof or how drafty the upper level was until the potent warmth of the living room overtook him and became a mirage of enduring intoxication. That, combined with how much richer the room was with art and light and comfort, nearly undid Liam completely. He felt sick because he’d confused Zayn. He felt humiliated because he’d botched a good hour of hard work just before the payoff. He had half a mind to just leave, relieve the tension he’d just accidentally created, assuming Zayn would hardly notice the difference.

“Thanks for showing me the house,” he tried, a last ditch effort. “Thanks for letting me come in.”

Zayn nodded, but he was preoccupied, bent over his chair, flipping through the pages of his book. “Let me know about the porch.”

Liam nodded, but to no one who was paying attention. “Okay,” he said. “Zayn,” he recited, experimentally. Then he chuckled. “The Guy Who Stopped the Bleeding.”

Zayn was next to him before Liam could think. And good. Because as Zayn’s one hand found the loop of Liam’s belt and the other the back of his neck, thought was not at all welcome anymore. Zayn stood up on his toes to slide his fingers in Liam’s hair and the force of him returning back to the ground pulled Liam back with him, their hips and stomachs coming together in the middle. Liam bent his head down and kissed him. Zayn leaned back up and kissed him deeper. He knocked Liam a step into the arm of the chair, and Liam’s legs got so weak he sunk onto it, spreading his knees so Zayn could close the distance between them again. Each exchange turned into a challenge, a tug of war that left them both breathless, half tipped into the chair, covered in a thin layer of sweat. Liam pulled his head back, Zayn still pressed against all of the rest of him. He felt nervous, like running away and like he wanted a thousand more versions of this all at once. But Zayn wouldn’t give him another second to sort it out. He pulled him into another pressing, hungry kiss that wrapped Liam up as completely as the suffocating heat. He needed a moment, perspective, something. So he pressed one hand on Zayn’s chest, not pushing him away but guiding the strength of his kiss to something that allowed Liam to sit them both back up, gasp one breath, take a second to look Zayn in the eye.

He looked as lost as Liam. But on Zayn, lost looked dangerous.

He slid his hand from Zayn’s chest to the hem of his shirt, gripping it with gentle firmness in his fingers and leading Zayn into a much softer kiss, one their lips clung to just a second longer than they intended. Liam buzzed with it. Even as he could feel Zayn start to pull back.

Soon his shirt slid from Liam’s fingers, their chests parted, their stomachs, their hips. Zayn was a full foot away.

“Do that again,” Liam tried.

The cloud of the moment dissipated; Liam started to get all his feeling back - his shaking hands, his still heaving chest, the dull pain the arm of the chair had left in the small of his back. Zayn, however, stood with indifference. His still looked dangerously lost.

“You should go,” he said, and Liam was disappointed, though not surprised.

“I want to come back,” Liam tried again.

Zayn wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Liam swelled with the ghost of his earlier impatience. He stood from the chair and side stepped Zayn intentionally just a little too close. “Don’t suppose you want to give me a reason why.”

Of course, Zayn had no answer.

“Well,” said Liam. “Then I guess I’ll fucking see you tomorrow.”

He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw the beginnings of Zayn’s smile before he shut the door behind him.


	6. UPDATE

In case you guys missed this in the comments, here's where I'm at:

I am so sorry you guys. The holidays really got away with me. I'm editing the fic that I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November and posting it over here right now - http://archiveofourown.org/works/5629591. Please check that out! There is a Ziam plot line in there as well, and it is ALREADY FINISHED haha so we won't run into this problem. I should be done with that this week and will get back to Out of the Woods. Thanks so much for sticking in there and still being interested!


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